🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <f740a7f3-b822-4d5c...@googlegroups.com>, 
johnda...@gmail.com says...
> 
> Haven't been here in a long while.
> 
> How come no one is talking about Wasteland 2 which launches today?

Well for starters I don't like talking about a game that I have not seen 
or played yet - unless it's publishing date or some such.

I finished downloading my copy yesterday, I didn't have to wait for it 
to cost only 10 bucks since I am an early kickstarter foundation member 
of the game, but I haven't wanted to be in on the beta testing, I'm 
interested in playing a finished game (more or less) rather than paying 
MORE for less (i.e. pay extra to be a free beta tester). So it's all new 
to me.

The download from GOG is 9.62 gigabytes on  the HDD, broken into 6 files 
as you download it from that source. The installed game is 21.1 GB on 
the harddrive (PC). It took a fair while to download and install. 

I've gone and played to the first set point in-game with prefab 
characters, then made my own party twice, learning the interface as I 
went on, and my third home-baked party is now at "The Ag-Centre" which 
is the second (or third, depending on your choices) destination in  the 
game's storyline. 

The feeling of the game is very Fallout_1-like. The interface is a 
little un-obvious at times, for instance when you do your party creation 
you can actually see, on the tooltips of various skills, if another 
member of your party already HAS this skill. Took me all the 3 creation 
processes mentioned to suss that out. Clever, but, well, in the absence 
of a printed manual not obvious at all. Similarly I had to watch a 
youtube video of somebody playing the beta to figure out how 
weaponsmithing works. I guess I will  get around to reading the pdf 
manual eventually! 

So far I can't say a hell of a lot about the story. Yes, story. I can 
only laugh about people who bitch about framerates and graphics in a 
game of this nature, the graphics of Fallout 1 would be just fine for me 
in a game of this type: I am interested in the substance of the story, 
the subtlety of the way the game can be played and  not the bling. The 
game plays fine and smoothly in 2560x1600 resolution - that's all I can 
say. Ok, I would probably not settle  for Wizardry 2 style gfx, but ...
 
I need to  rotate the camera a lot to see into all the nooks and 
crannies of the isometric landscape, and that is somewhat tedious since 
I haven't found  a 'free camera' control button yet - i.e. I need to 
press the mousewheel down to rotate  the camera.

So far I have found that there are at least 3 fundamentally different 
ways to play the first encounter with hostiles, all yield experience for 
the team, and in my purview that is a Good Thing. Many ways to skin a 
cat, and many ways of skinning to discover, test, and play around with.
I am sure there are yet many things to discover, even about basic 
gameplay, that I haven't scratched the surface of. I have begun to do 
some save-scumming just to facilitate experimentation with different 
approaches to a problem the game sets me. I.e.: Hey, demolition skill 
can be used to defuse traps!

Happy to discuss gameplay and experience-based impressions from here on  
as I am working my way into the game (rather than waffling on about 
someone's conjecture about something they haven't even seen).

-P.

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